Controlling Your Garden Environment

Plants are a lot cleverer than we might think. If you are aware of the changes that occur with the plants in the garden, you can sometimes predict everything from the coming weather to the changing of the seasons without ever having to consult the weather forecast!

The weather can, however trick plants into 'thinking' there has been a change in the weather or even the season.

Halloween Poppies: The unseasonal weather of 2007 fooled some wild plants into thinking that spring started in August! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This can be seen when there is unseasonal hot weather after a cold snap in winter. Plants can 'assume' that it is the start of Spring and bulbs will start flowering.

In recent years many areas throughout the world have experienced unseasonal weather and extremes of weather and this has caused many problems for people growing crops.

Creating sheltered areas on your property can help you to control your plants and ensure that you get the flowers or fruits when you expect them to be ready. Another benefit is that this will also help you to reduce damage that might occur from extreme weather conditions such as hail or heavy rain.

Shading plants can also create a false reduction in daylight hours, which will affect the plants growth patterns as they measure the seasons by the amount of daylight.

Hothouses can also create a false environment and this can be beneficial if you want to produce plants throughout the year for flowers or fruit.

Temperature in a hothouse can be adjusted to control plant growth, and to a lesser extent this can also be done outside the hothouse by the placement of your plants in various different positions on your property depending on their exposure to sunlight, wind, cold and rain.

Designing your garden by taking into account all these factors will help you to keep your plants "thinking" as you do, allowing you to get what you want, when you want, from your garden.

It will also allow you to better plan the progression of plants from one season to the next.